Look closely and you'll see this male Eastern Carpenter Bee is carrying dozens of mites. Mites are arachnids (8 legs, like spiders). I don't believe these are feeding on the bee, but instead are using him as transportation - a bee bus, if you will. This behavior, when one-- --organism uses another simply to move around, is called "phoresis." It's often a non-flying tiny creature hitchhiking on a large flying one, as here. But I've read conflicting info on whether these mites are ultimately good, neutral or harmful; the mites may consume detritus--

(Thread) I returned to California last Sunday after 15 weeks in Wilmington, N. Carolina. Before I got there, I knew I wanted to see wild-growing Venus Flytraps, which I knew grew in the Carolinas. In fact, I learned, they only grow within about a 100 miles of Wilmington, and-- --nowhere else in the world. Wilmington knows that it's flytrap central - there's even a sculpture on the riverfront and a floor design at the airport. Before I left, a friend, photographer Clay Bolt (look him up on IG or his site claybolt.com/index; he's amazing) told me--

Here are pics of the mantis I found 2 nights ago. I'll start w the beauty shots. She's an adult female Stagmomantis sp. (I think S. limbata or californica), a native sp. in my area. She's perched on California Fuschia (Epilobium sp., formerly Zauschneria). This plant is great-- --for SoCal dry gardens; it's one of the only things that blooms in late summer, and survives with little to no extra water once established. Hummingbirds love it, too. Btw, with our skies occluded by wildfire smoke, the only way to get this blue sky background was--

For #WorldSnakeDay, how about a snake story? It's also a birthday story. For my 50th birthday (ten years ago, ye gods), my middle son accompanied me for a day trip to the Mojave Desert and to the poppy fields in the Antelope Valley. We saw #Eddiethetortoise's wild cousins-- --provided welcome shade for some excellent horned lizard friends--

As someone who wears glasses, I wish I had this spider's superpower - it can literally lose and regrow its night vision in 24 hours. It's a net-casting spider, aka ogre-faced spider, family Deinopidae. This one was in Madagascar, but they're found many places, including in-- --Florida. They're nocturnal hunters that make a springy web net that they use to snare prey. The web isn't sticky with glue (like an orb weaver web), but is "cribellate" silk, made of super-fine microfibers that entangle prey and literally bond to the waxy waterproof coating--

Bug-eyed: a thread. After putting up mantis pics, I've had questions about their eyes, and whether the black dots in them are actually pupils. They're not - they're called "pseudo-pupils," and are an optical artifact of compound eyes' structure. A compound eye is-- --composed of many individual optical "modules" called ommatidia, tube-like structures for gathering and sensing light, all bundled together, like a bunch of... eye pipes? I'll call them eye pipes. Each one produces a small piece of a larger image mosaic (so no, insects do NOT--

Thread - Ethical Nature Photography:

If you take images of nature, or share images of nature, chances are… you like nature. And if you like nature, chances are… you don’t like nature being harmed. So doesn’t it make sense to want to take photos in a responsible way? And as-- --an image consumer, don’t you want to know if the gorgeous/gross/amazing shot you just shared was created ethically? Most photographers I know have already thought a lot about this. But photography is not just a niche hobby requiring specialty equipment any more. We are all--

Before #Eddiethetortoise came into our lives, we had Bob. Here is his story (a thread):

This is a photo of Bob on the day we found him in the spring of 1994 (taken with my old Nikon film camera, needless to say). But his story actually starts about ten months earlier, in-- --May of 1993. That's when we moved into our house. We were young, and both nervous and excited to own ten percent of our own home (the rest belonging, of course, to the bank). Jump forward to--

Thread: As you enjoy this pic of #Eddiethetortoise pruning a rose, I want to tell you part of his story that I feel needs more context. After my original (pinned) tweet, many of you, rightfully, expressed sadness and/or anger about the neglect he suffered. And yes-- --Eddie did suffer. Nearly died, in fact. But there's more to the story than blame. When we moved into our house years ago, we learned that our next-door neighbors had a tortoise named Fast Eddie. The couple--

Eddie is one of our desert tortoises. If you don’t push the door shut all the way, he will open it and come in. Eddie is probably over 50 years old, and ours is at least the third house in our neighborhood he’s lived at. Desert tortoises are a protected species and cannot be taken from the wild as pets. But they live a long time, and a long time ago they were not protected - so many people you meet who grew up in Southern California either had one in their yard or knew someone who did.